Tuesday, 31 August 2010

Crikey. I started this blog three years ago apparently. I must have been very tired (nowhere near as tired as I am now, mind). I guess I wanted to say a quick thank you to all those who regularly read and comment here. There have been plenty of times when I've thought about packing it in recently as the pressures of parenthood and work take their toll (and their time) but it doesn't take much appreciation to make you want to keep it up, a few comments and messages recently have acted as a tonic, and I hope that it has continued to be something worth reading. Given the lack of response to non-book posts I probably won't be writing about the other arts so much (that said I've already written a film review for tomorrow and a TV series review later in the month) and book reviews are likely to become slightly less frequent. I'm hoping less quantity will mean more quality, although I've always worked hard to make sure that my thoughts on books are as well-reasoned and written as possible. I would love to have even more discussion with other readers about them, to get more people reading and commenting, so if you want to recommend this blog to anyone I won't be in the least offended.

As for the recipe for the perfect cheesecake that I was searching for three years ago, I'm almost there. I may not quite know what the perfect recipe is but I do know what it 'aint. You have been warned...

Congratulations on three years of this excellent blog. I think this means that you've lasted longer than the Sunday Correspondent newspaper in the early 1990s. They got paid for producing that, though clearly they couldn't make it pay!

I've only been here since Easter but I'm enjoying the ride. I like the fact that your critical eye does not limit itself to books. With so many top-notch "book blogs" out there, your wider remit could be your USP?

Thank you all for the nice comments. I guess if an album/film demands that I sit down and write a post about it then it'll continue to happen. As I said, there's a film post tomorrow and I hope to be able to write about David Simon's new series Treme in the near future.

Oh heck, the party's over again, sorry Will belated blogbirthday greetings and I love reading here so please don't go far...and I see I have to type in "oventing" to get my comment through, that's going to be my word of the week.

Yes, please don't forget that some of us rely on you for music recommendations!

And re comments, the problem is that so many people read blogs on feed readers now that they don't visit the site itself. I get more viewers now than ever before, but fewer comments overall. That's progress.

Thank you both (in many ways my blogging godparents). I won't go far and will try to keep the music recommendations coming, although there isn't anything rocking my world at the moment - certainly not the Mercury Prize winning 'xx'.